Java ME - Mobile phone programming books?

[dlofnep]

Hi there - 4th year coming up, and we have to develop a a year-long project. I was initally tempted as just doing a straight forward database driven website, or a standalone desktop application - But I thought, it might be interesting to design something for a mobile phone.

I have 3 years of Java behind me, and I'm tempted to try Java ME and work from there. The only mobile-phone application stuff I have done before is with flash, but flash is very straight forward and won't challenge me.

I was wondering if anybody has any ideas on a good book to buy for Java ME, specially for Mobile Phone development or any tips they could offer.

[draffodx]

I have just finished 4th year and we done mobile programming during the two semesters using MIDP or JAVA ME

The book we used is called Kicking Butt with MIDP and MSA by Jonathen Knudsen.

Its a decent book for the basics but it highlights the problems of Java ME, its very "fiddly" is the best word to describe it.

We used Netbeans and the mobile plug in to create the MIDlets and it turned out the creating Java mobile applications is very frustrating. Theres lots of niggly problems that need to be sorted out in a round about way.

I managed to create:

A mobile game
A phonebook
A picture viewer that connected to flickr.

For my final year project I also decided to do a mobile application, however I decided to look into and use Google's Android platform.

I found learning Android and programming for it to be much more rewarding and you can create much more powerful applications utilising the GPS, Google maps, camera and other features, the only problem is the only handset out there that runs it at the minute is the G1.

Details of my final year project can be found here - http://www.donalrafferty.com

I think Android would be a much better option for you final year project

[dlofnep]

I was planning on possibly develop an application revolving around the Irish language - Do you think Android is a suitable platform? I'm going to have a look on it now - Any preferrable reading material on Android itself?

Thanks for the detailed post btw, appreciated.

[draffodx]

Originally Posted by dlofnep

I was planning on possibly develop an application revolving around the Irish language - Do you think Android is a suitable platform? I'm going to have a look on it now - Any preferrable reading material on Android itself?

Thanks for the detailed post btw, appreciated.

Yes I would say Android would be much more suitable to develop something with the Irish language, a translation type app would be very possible with Android, more so than with Java ME in my opinion.

The dev guide is a good place to start reading(http://developer.android.com/guide/index.html), for a more general overview of Android videos on youtube or elsewhere give a good overview of how it works and the ideas behind it.

Books
Ed Burnette (2008) Hello, Android Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform, The Pragmatic Programmers

I used the above book to get into it, it describes the basics very well and helps you get a grasp on the views and life cycle of an Android application and create some basic apps but I found it a bit limiting for more interesting technical stuff.

Mark L. Murphy(2008) The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development, CommonsWare

My supervisor gave me the above book and I found it slightly more helpful with the more difficult aspects of the development but still ultimately limiting.

The most help I got was from searching google docs on Android, following Googles tutorials, and from online forums that specialised in Android developers.

I found http://www.anddev.org/ to be very helpful reading although if you get stuck and ask a question it often gets ignored but theres good reading there.

[dlofnep]

Thanks, you're a star. Have Android downloading now, so going to tinkle away at it for the night.

[dlofnep]

Interesting so far - haven't delved into yet other than a mandatory helloworld app, but just looking at the api - I'm pretty impressed for far.

I've got both Professional Android Application Development and Hello, Android. I'm going to try get through both. Have the night off work tonight, so I'm going to try code something more substantial.

I was looking at using XML as a method to define the layout opposed to hard-coding it, really interesting.

[draffodx]

Yeh it is very interesting, after taking a break from it I'm gonna start coding something new myself in Android as no jobs seem to be coming up for a Commercial Computing graduate.

I'd be very interested in how you get on with things, due to personal problems during my 4th year I didn't get to make what I wanted due to lack of time.

[dlofnep]

Once I have something anyway substantial done, I'll let you know

[dlofnep]

Draffodx - Is it possible to use a combination of Android and Java ME for an Android application? There is an API I want to use that's available for ME, but it doesn't appear to be available yet for Android, despite being actually developed by Google.

[draffodx]

Originally Posted by dlofnep

Draffodx - Is it possible to use a combination of Android and Java ME for an Android application? There is an API I want to use that's available for ME, but it doesn't appear to be available yet for Android, despite being actually developed by Google.

Not that I'm aware of, I don't remember coming across anything like that anyway.

It sounds like it could be possible but I honestly dont know. I'm only starting to look into getting back into it now so if i come across anything i'll let you know